Methods of Work: It Didn’t Happen If You Didn’t Write It Down
It may be an iffy plot device from a Tom Clancy thriller but it can be a valuable approach: if you didn’t write it down, it didn’t happen.
That applies along multiple axes. If you think of a good idea and don’t record it somewhere, you’ll forget it. Inevitably. If you need something done by a certain time and don’t record it somewhere, you’ll miss it. If you learn something while roaming through code, or exploring a new tool, write your experiences down. You’ll thank yourself later.
But How?
There are lots of ways to do this; I’m going to go through some I have tried. One prominent area I am going to ignore is purely commercial tools; I haven’t had the need, and since I spend most of my time in Linux, my options are limited anyway. Folks I know who are serious about GTD really like Microsoft OneNote; I have friends who rave about it. Don’t ignore it if you are a Windows person and can justify the cost (under $100).
The Early Years – Emacs
For a looong time, I had a file called ‘notes.txt’ open in an Emacs window. When something needed recording, I jotted it down in simple outline format, using dashes and asterisks. When a note became old and not immediately relevant, or was finished, I just moved it to the bottom. Primitive indeed. But I could get Emacs on every computer I had, text files are easy to mail around, so it worked for me. But having everything in one file made for a big jumble.
Mind-Mapping: Great for Actual Note Taking
My favorite live note-taking application for complicated subjects remains FreeMind. A nifty mind-mapping application which is freely available, works on any platform (courtesy of Java), is fast, scales to complex mind maps, and full of export options. I really like the export to Flash; and animated, interactive Flash representation of a map. Very nice indeed. It is really good in meetings where you can just grab concepts and polish the organization of the map later. But it isn’t really a general solution. I find the lovely expressiveness of mind-mapping leads me to over-produce content, and I get too caught up in presentation if I am not careful.
Evernote – Lots of Virtue, Lots of Vice
For a while I used Evernote as my main note taking app, but sadly it isn’t great at this. It is cross-platform, by virtue of being a web app, and it has never lost a jot of content. But sometimes I don’t have a network connection. At which point, fail. Evernote also has some weird design decisions. For example, when you click on a note, it doesn’t immediately open for editing; I can’t think of a single time where that was useful. You have to click an extra button to edit it. Bizarre. Plus it doesn’t do simple asterisk to outline translation on the fly, which, dang it, it should. It ought to have an outline mode, period.
There are advantageous to having the data in the cloud; it works on a variety of platforms, and has a pretty nice iPhone app. But beware, if you add rich-text formatting to your notes via the desktop web interface, you will not be able to do so with the iPhone app. Apparently, the Evernote folks think the iPhone is unable to handle rich text; Steve Jobs would be amazed. What will they say regarding the iPad?
Evernote has enough quirks that I don’t use it for everyday notes, though I do use it for longer term stuff.
Google Docs, Zoho, etc.
You might think Google Docs and the Zoho suite would be contenders, but neither work without a network, and both are fairly heavy as webapps go. Now, I use Google Docs for other things, especially when I need to edit a doc with several other people. But Google Docs has privacy issues, and there are anecdotal tales of lost and censored documents all over the web. Which would be only somewhat worrisome, except that Google-as-service is marred by the lack of a phone support option. Pity the Nexus One customer with a problem. With no way to get someone on the phone when something is wrong, I am loath to trust more of my data to Google (GMail is enough of the kool-aid, thank you).
Zoho actually has a dedicated note-taking component, but it also seems too heavy for simple text notes. Somehow, the presentation just doesn’t gel for me. It might reward a larger investment of my time. I have no time at the moment however.
Stupid Simple Text Files — Still a Good Way To Go
So for the last several years, I’ve taken advantage of a feature common in text editors these days — session management. Under Windows (when I am forced to use it) I use Notepad++, under Linux, I use Kate. Both of them let me designate Sessions, collections of files to manage en masse. Under Linux, I have my default Kate session open, iconified, to the system tray on startup. Under Windows I just have a shorcut to do it on-demand. I use Windows less so I have worried about it less. This allows me to have multiple files, each to cover a broad area. Dead simple organization.
A couple micro-format conventions (dashes for titles, asterisks and indentation for outlining) take care of formatting. This is the polar opposite of the expressiveness of FreeMind, but I find it helps me concentrate on the content not the formatting. Plus, text files are the lowest common denominator of storage; easy to backup (Paste them into Evernote occasionally!), easy to mail, easy to search, amenable to source control checkin.
Let’s Note Forget: Pencil and Paper
Yep, for lots of things, you can’t beat pencil and paper. I carry a Moleskine clone in my laptop bag; I’m on my fourth or fifth in four years. For notes where diagrams are important, can’t beat it. Laying out UI components? Get your pad. For lots of stuff, you can’t beat paper.
The downside is, you can’t go back and reorganize easily. Sometimes notes on paper feel like they are being chiseled into stone compared to working with an electronic note.
But in some jobs, keeping a log is a must for professional reasons, as patent trails an such. Hard to argue against a physical notebook.
Right up until the point where you lose the notebook itself. Ouch.
Fun with Wiki’s
Wiki’s, like mind maps, can be fabulously expressive. We have one at the office, and while sometimes it resembles a disorganized dumping ground, search makes it pretty useful, and most of my technical musings end up there.
TiddliWiki is a neat idea I used for a while. It is a complete personal wiki completely contained in a single HTML file. There are lots of things to tweak, lots of templates and flavors around to suit various tastes. But … I mostly hate wiki formatting. The disconnect between the editing representation and the display representation is too large for me. YMMV.
Buy Why? Why Write it Down?
Why do this? Really, at this point, recording things is part of how I frame the design and understand the problem. It helps me break things down, and build up solutions. It enables me to identify what the hard parts will be, and what is low-hanging fruit.
It never fails to amaze me how much I learn by doodling notes about a problem, walking away for a couple days, emphatically not thinking about it, then coming back to it. The back of my brain apparently is really adept at making progress on a problem when I seed it and leave it alone. Having the original notes written down when I come back is key to making sure you don’t forget a bunch of details.
Another benefit is in the trail you leave behind. It can be fulfilling or depressing, depending, to look back and see what you got done and what you didn’t. It is much easier to identify that I am in a trough, development-wise, when I can concretely see that my velocity is down. Conversely, it is cool when you are just generating good code at a fair clip to look back a mountain of identified and disposed of tasks.
So take notes. Jot stuff down. Use any method that suits you, but your great thoughts never really happened if you didn’t write them down.
Explore posts in the same categories: Software, TechTags: Design By Gravity, Evernote, Google, Software Development, Wikis, Zoho
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February 22, 2010 at 4:13 am
If you’re using Emacs I’d recommend org-mode. It provides all the advantages of keeping notes in text files with the added benefits of much better hierarchical organisation, todo lists, reminders etc
February 22, 2010 at 4:23 am
Use Tomboy. There is an online sync addon and the data files are XML, so you can open them in a normal text editor too. “sudo apt-get install tomboy”.
February 22, 2010 at 4:57 am
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February 22, 2010 at 6:46 am
Great post !
Writing things down is one of my pet peeves – why do people think they can remember *everything* in their head ?
(shameless plug)
If you want a combination of local storage, text files (with microformat) and wiki, then I humbly recommend my company’s product: PpcSoft iKnow
A quick summary of main differences between iKnow, Onenote and Evernote
– http://www.ppcsoft.com/blog/iknow-onenote-evernote.asp
OneNote is best for some users, Evernote for others, and iKnow for the rest (not really; pencil and paper is still the best tool in many situations 🙂 )
(/shameless plug)
February 22, 2010 at 7:15 am
I disagree about Evernote. There are mobile clients for it that will upload the notes later when there is an available connection. The desktop clients work in the same way.
Although personally I can’t use Evernote for all my note-taking needs because at Uni a lot of the notes are weird squiggly lines and formulas, evernote isn’t too friendly for writing down those.
February 22, 2010 at 1:26 pm
I’ll agree with you regarding Evernote’s offline synch — it is pretty smart. But if you created a note elsewhere, and haven’t been to a network with your mobile yet, you’re screwed.
And the Rich-Text-means-no-editing thing for the iPhone app stinks.
February 22, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Evernote will always sync the meta-info for your notes, but it will only cache the contents locally if you pay the monthly fee. That is, if you create a note on machine A, it will only get cached for offline viewing on machine B if you explicitly look at the note on machine B while you are online. Paying customers don’t have to worry about that; everything gets automatically cached on every machine where you run the app.
Agree on the note taking, though. I tend to draw a lot of diagrams, and Evernote’s not a good solution for that. In fact, there is no good solution for that, as far as I know, besides pen and paper.
February 22, 2010 at 8:22 am
I should try freemind and hey what about tomboy?
I also used tiddly wiki and similar wikis sometime back but for some reason I lost the habit. For now I use simple text files, for syncs sake symlinked in to my Dropbox directory.
February 22, 2010 at 9:37 am
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned KeepNote. It’s an awesome tool and is cross-platform (at least for linux and windows).
Combine it with dropbox FTW.
http://rasm.ods.org/keepnote/
February 22, 2010 at 1:27 pm
KeepNote does seem quite nice; I’m going to give it a try. Thanks!
February 22, 2010 at 12:03 pm
i vacillate between pocket notebooks and a voice recorder. have a stack of small notebooks which I sometimes mine for ideas. have folders full of mp3s and some old microcassettes which i intend to run through speech-to-text but haven’t.
you can also type notes into a blackberry and later export to csv. this has the benefit of making it look like you’re texting, so you can do it in social situations.
February 22, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Hey Chris,
I love your rundown on these note taking apps. I’d also call your attention to Springpad (where I work) at http://springpadit.com. Like Evernote, it is hosted in the cloud (and our iPhone app will be out soon) and helps you remember anything. But as opposed to being “dead data” that sits in your account, Springpad works especially well at capturing just the info you want to remember and automatically organizing and enhancing it. For example, when you see, hear or read about a new restaurant you want to try, you can easily save it in Springpad and it’ll automatically be stored in your restaurant folder, and enhanced with the restaurant’s business info, and links to Yelp and Open Table. You can also easily set alarms to email or text yourself reminders when you want to remember something. Would be great if you give it a whirl and let me know if you have any questions!
February 22, 2010 at 1:53 pm
I use Things on my mac and Iphone. Things is GTD software but I made a project: IDEA and herein I write or record all my idea’s.
February 22, 2010 at 1:56 pm
“It Didn’t Happen If You Didn’t Write It Down”…I heard this statement when I was in the Air Force (1986-1994). Clancy did not originate this.
In Boot Camp we were told…
CYA, document everything! (you can figure out CYA).
This was VERY good advice since the UCMJ has real teeth! (No troubles for me. Honorable Discharge).
Typically, the above statement was usually heard when someone was sharing their problem/situation. That someone would be asked “Did you write it down?”. Usually, they said no. In response we would say something link “your out of luck”.
February 22, 2010 at 1:57 pm
[…] happen if you didn’t write it down” philosophy? Tell us about it in the comments. Methods of Work: It Didn’t Happen If You Didn’t Write It Down [Design By […]
February 22, 2010 at 2:43 pm
In response to TechBlogger…
Yes, a philosophy but mostly VERY wise advice during Military life.
I Civilian life I take the philosophy further…
1. I don’t delete e-mails. There have been times where someone has claimed something happened. Having the e-mails saved me (CYA).
2. I use Notepad++ to keep daily logs on my work activities. I get billed out by the hour and have to track what I did and when.
3. Personal Life: Use a scanner. Keep good financial records.
February 22, 2010 at 2:02 pm
Do you log everything, or just write random thoughts down?
February 22, 2010 at 2:02 pm
I have been off-and-on using Emacs records for a number of years for such things. Sometimes a Moleskine notebook, or similar. I’m not as regular at this as I ought to be, which leads to losses of things. I tend to agree with the evaluations of tools.
FYI, the most wonderful elaboration on “it wasn’t written down so it didn’t happen” was on the BBC show “Yes, Minister,” as one of the more vivid of Sir Humphries’ monologues.
http://www.phill.co.uk/comedy/yespm/quotes.html
“It is characteristic of all committee discussions and decisions that every member has a vivid recollection of them, and that every member’s recollection of them differs violently from every other member’s recollection; consequently we accept the convention that the official decisions are those and only those which have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials; from which it emerges with elegant inevitability, that any decision which has been officially reached would have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, and any decisions which is not recorded in the minutes by the officials has not been officially reached, even if one or more members believe they can recollect it; so in this particular case, if the decision would have been officially reached, it would have been recorded in the minutes by the officials and it isn’t so it wasn’t.”
February 22, 2010 at 2:04 pm
I like Evernote as a place to put things that I would ordinarily have the urge to write on a sticky note. And since it can do word recognition in pictures, it’s a great place to scan and stash receipts, business cards, etc. Not the greatest for note-taking, as I said above.
TiddlyWiki and I broke up after a torrid one-week affair for the reasons you mentioned.
For journal and log entries, I’ve been using a local install of WordPress. There are clients that will sync with it and let you work offline. I like that it’s searchable.
I think that mind mapping in general is overhyped. It’s outlining, with a tree-shaped presentation. But it can be a good solution for real-time notes.
I just can’t get past the lack of being able to draw pictures, though. I’ll need to hang onto my notebooks for a while longer.
February 22, 2010 at 2:04 pm
[…] happen if you didn’t write it down” philosophy? Tell us about it in the comments. Methods of Work: It Didn’t Happen If You Didn’t Write It Down [Design By […]
February 22, 2010 at 2:07 pm
I love to scribble notes and my desk is usually full of them but they don’t make it into the computer. I graduated to the LiveScribe pen. The only problem, I keep forgetting to turn it on. Just an idea for you paper and pencil types out there…
February 22, 2010 at 2:07 pm
[…] Methods of Work: It Didn’t Happen If You Didn’t Write It Down [Design By Gravity] Tagged:mind hacksnotesproductivityquotables […]
February 22, 2010 at 2:12 pm
[…] happen if you didn’t write it down” philosophy? Tell us about it in the comments. Methods of Work: It Didn’t Happen If You Didn’t Write It Down [Design By […]
February 22, 2010 at 2:29 pm
org-mode is awesome. If you are an Emacs-gur, give it a go.
It’s based on simple text files, but it’s very powerful:
http://orgmode.org/
February 22, 2010 at 2:30 pm
typo: Emacs-guy
February 22, 2010 at 2:41 pm
I discovered http://www.simpletext.ws when I got my Android phone it is an awesomely simple “notepad in the cloud” and helps me keep all my quick notes synced across every device I use…really useful!
February 22, 2010 at 4:05 pm
Pulse SmartPen
I have used this for about 6 months. It works as advertised. See the video link below.
http://www.livescribe.com/smartpen/videos.html
Cliff
February 22, 2010 at 4:11 pm
[…] Methods of Work: It Didn’t Happen If You Didn’t Write It Down I have to make more notes. Much more! […]
February 22, 2010 at 4:38 pm
[…] happen if you didn’t write it down” philosophy? Tell us about it in the comments. Methods of Work: It Didn’t Happen If You Didn’t Write It Down [Design By […]
February 22, 2010 at 5:09 pm
I don’t find a problem with connectivity and Evernote. If I am super desperate I can pull up on my Blackberry and even edit if I want. I can also take notes on email on my phone and email to Evernote as a note. My problem with Evernote is organization. I find that I put too much stuff in it and I don’t always review all the notes on a regular basis. I can search if I need to and I do use tags, but I have over a 1000 notes in it from when I was using it heavy. I have reverted back to using a yellow notepad or imitation moleskin as they are the easiest to get input into when I do not have my computer with me. I am hoping the iPad might be changing this, we will see.
February 22, 2010 at 6:15 pm
I hear you on Evernote; the odd interface choices bug me much mote than their connectivity issues.
Since I carry a pretty beefy laptop everywhere I work, and an iPhone everwhere else, it is hard to get excited about the iPad personally, tho I see the attractionfor others,
February 22, 2010 at 6:40 pm
I use same tools: Notepad++ in windows, Vim (sorry I’m not Emacs) in linux, freemind.
For text notes I use ReStructuredText format -used in Python documentation-, It’s an extended plain text format that you can transform in html or PDF very easy, just with a command line tool.
February 22, 2010 at 9:38 pm
Very clever. Do you have preference of ReStructuredText vs. Markdown?
Both are better than wiki formatting, which I just can’t love.
February 23, 2010 at 1:36 am
I didn’t know Markdown, coming from Python I learned ReStructuredText and apply it every day for taking notes, and publish them in HTML, RTF or PDF.
I never used myself but it seems to me that ReStructuredText with Sphynx are a fast way to build nice documentation web pages.
February 23, 2010 at 12:05 am
I used to use ReStructuredText as well, but eventually I switched to org-mode. Same general idea — text is just much nicer to take notes in — but with a bit more support for structuring notes, plus all the org-mode bells and whistles when I want them.
February 22, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Nowadays I keep a lot of my notes in a min map format. I use simple mind mapping program on mac called MindNode.
Come to think about, storing all your notes in full text in Evernote or wherever else will take too much time later to go though. Something that I have experience lately. There are just too many notes which I stored which took time to go through. Mind Maps on the other hand, keep it simple and straight to the point.
February 23, 2010 at 1:20 am
I am a heavy OneNote user. It mostly works the way I do. It does have its quirks, but I still love it.
When away from my desk, I write notes in a paper notebook. I rarely look at those notes after about a week, but having them for a while is useful. Plus, the act of writing stuff down help me remember it.
February 23, 2010 at 2:42 am
I discovered GSNotes years ago (actually called Golden Section Notes) and have never looked back. Oh, I’ve tried OneNote, Evernote, Keynote and a few others – I always ended up with GSNotes. The design is just stupid simple – export as plain text, html or PDF. I just usually use the main app – it’s portable on a USB key. It just works.
February 23, 2010 at 5:36 am
I use http://www.memonic.com
It is evernote like service. But way better…
February 23, 2010 at 11:58 am
Another note-taking alternative is Springpad (http://springpadit.com). Not only does it enable easy rich text note-taking and bookmarking, it also makes it quick and easy to save things you typically find interesting…like restaurants, products, recipes, wines etc.
Springpad is database driven. So, not only do we detect and structure the core data of what you’re capturing (recipe ingredients, restaurant address, product specs, business contact info, movie particulars, etc.), we also automatically organize it for you.
And, we enhance what you’ve captured by integrating with popular web services to help you out when you’re ready to take action (links to Open Table for reservations, price comparison for products, local listings and showtimes for movies, etc.)
(Disclosure – I’m a Springpad co-founder)
February 23, 2010 at 12:42 pm
The problem with “organization schemes” for me is that I think I get what I like and then information records need updated, edited, or deleted or worse yet re-organized. I chose notefrog; http://notefrog.com/indexgo.html#nfcmd_dwin. Yes it costs money $10 or $20.00 It’s drill down search method sold me. You can then take stacks (notefrogs metaphor for stacks of notes and move them, or change the search criteria. Using words, letters, or symbols you can develop your own search language. This way I can continually refine how I search my notes which is just a valuable as the notes.
February 23, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Totally agree…smart people write things down.
I tried to use MS OneNote once for taking notes, but it didn’t last long.
February 23, 2010 at 6:40 pm
The quote is not from Clancy but rather from Grisham. It is the whole premise of his first novel success. However I learned it in Law School in 1972 so…..
February 23, 2010 at 7:31 pm
I first encountered it in “Debt of Honor”, when the main characters wife proffers it as a solution to an engineered stock market collapse. Since all the records were lost, why not jsut reset values to the last known values? Since the trades weren’t “written down”, did they really happen.
It was cleverly used, but I am sure it comes from many sources. In particular, the military seems fond of it.
February 23, 2010 at 8:04 pm
[…] Methods of Work: It Didn’t Happen If You Didn’t Write It Down It may be an iffy plot device from a Tom Clancy thriller but it can be a valuable approach: if you didn’t write […] […]
February 24, 2010 at 8:52 am
[…] happen if you didn’t write it down” philosophy? Tell us about it in the comments. Methods of Work: It Didn’t Happen If You Didn’t Write It Down [Design By […]
February 25, 2010 at 7:16 am
I usually compose a new email in the Gmail web client and save it in “Drafts”. This way I can access it from anywhere!
February 25, 2010 at 7:19 am
Now then, if you REALLY want to write it down AND put it in context, look at http://thebrain.com.
February 25, 2010 at 9:40 am
Add Gmail Tasks to Your Firefox Sidebar
http://lifehacker.com/5145357/add-gmail-tasks-to-your-firefox-sidebar
February 25, 2010 at 11:05 am
I’ve been using useketchup.com for the last week. It’s completely changed the way I take and share meeting notes. I even use it occasionally for organizing my thoughts.
If I need to manage tasks, I typically revert to rememberthemilk.com but I like the omnisync interface better…just not at the price.
February 25, 2010 at 9:03 pm
[…] Methods of Work: It Didn’t Happen If You Didn’t Write It Down « Design By Gravity […]
February 26, 2010 at 10:22 am
[…] Read more here […]
February 26, 2010 at 10:33 am
I tried onenote, notepad, etc – but the best in my opinion is paper/pencil and essentialpim
February 28, 2010 at 4:58 am
I ended up with evernote after trying most of above solutions.(ubuntu, mac, iPhone )
*rich text*
editing richtext is now supported in new version
(deletes and creates new copy instead of append to note
*offline*
new version does support to keep notebook or note available for offline use
*scribbles*
I usually take a photo of whiteboard or paper scribbles and upload to evernote (text recognition makes it easy to fund them back via search)
February 28, 2010 at 9:33 am
One thing I’ve found is that the iphone camera takes a good enough photo of both A4 and notebooks that they aren’t purely disjointed systems, but can start to connect.
evernote is helpful here, but not required.
February 28, 2010 at 8:38 pm
This is a good point; I never tried with my old 3G but my 3GS’s camera has proven useful for notebook drawings and whiteboard captures.
February 28, 2010 at 10:34 pm
Coincidentally, I started doing this not long ago after seeing this: http://www.adamthody.com/2010/01/indexing-ui-sketches/
My 3G is more than sufficient to capture a notebook page. I usually import the pictures directly from my phone with Preview, annotate, then copy and paste to Evernote. I find if I print neatly enough, Evernote can recognize some of the text, but adding a few tags works fine.
The more I use Evernote the more I like it. For one project I’m working on, I have handwritten notebook pages, snippets from PDF and Word docs, pictures, URLs, even a campus map, all in one place and searchable–sweet.
March 1, 2010 at 11:29 am
Evernote works well for that case, it just falls down (for me) on actual outlining. If I use the rich text, it doesn’t translate well to my phone, and if I use plain text annotation, it is no better than a text file.
I wish it had a “markdown” mode so I could use one of the plain-text micro-formats to mark up the text while retaining the ease of plain text.
March 2, 2010 at 2:15 am
[…] It is always good to keep a notebook around to record down the things that come to mind, Christopher Schanck said it well when he blogged, “Methods of Work: It Didn’t Happen If You Didn’t Write It Down.” […]
March 5, 2010 at 6:31 am
Treepad (www.treepad.com). Ten times better than OneNote. Much simpler to use and understand.
March 7, 2010 at 6:50 pm
thanks.. nice info
March 8, 2010 at 10:24 am
I used a wiki for a few years; but I didn’t want to spend the time organising it that would have made it useful.
For the last two years I’ve used a text file for each day (created by a cron job) linked to the name “daybook”, so I just open daybook and make notes.
Each note has a -tag- from a relatively small set, and I’ve written some simple utilities to show me the last x entries for a tag (findtag).
I never change old files; if necessary I put updated info into the current daybook.
I use textmate on a mac, so i can just type a command in and execute it within the current daybook entry; gives me the context/info I need for whatever i’m doing. I’ve bound some file opening commands to keys so I can navigate to old daybook files from my search results, to get more context.
I use syncbook on the iphone and programatically merge my iphone notes with those on my laptop.
Originally I thought I’d get the reference material out of daybook and put it in the wiki — but it turns out not to be necessary, I just findtag for recent info.
I’ve found that most of the time, I don’t actually need what I’ve noted — it’s just a way to work through things, to muse, to record thoughts or reactions to what i’m reading, to record config changes, or life events; anything. That’s what worked against me in the wiki; organised info would get muddled with todos, and maybe todos, and musings, and reflections– so it wasn’t useful.
Now I’ve got a place to do all that, and info can be found by findtag, by chronology, and by grep if necc, and being able to pull up any days entries gives me more context, which can be very helpful to remembering what I meant by my note.
March 8, 2010 at 10:30 am
Check out this talk of orgmode in action: http://www.nf.mpg.de/orgmode/guest-talk-dominik.html
March 18, 2010 at 8:19 pm
[…] It didn’t happen if you don’t write it down. […]
March 25, 2010 at 12:13 am
Great article, but there are two worlds for this, 1. defined things to accomplish and 2. Ideas that mold what things you choose to accomplish in the future.
At Drawing Down the Vision, were all about tracking the latter with pen and paper, to aid memory and retention.
May 19, 2010 at 8:52 am
I’m a big Onenote user, I’ve tried thebrain, Evernote and even knowledgebase software, one of this things that helped me was putting the default save on my dropbox folder so that it’s the same friom whichever pc I open up. I use tablet pc’s a lot and the ability to continue where I left off whilst roaming is fantastic!
May 31, 2010 at 10:50 am
Very awesome post! Honestly..
July 25, 2010 at 9:33 am
[…] Methods of Work: It Didn’t Happen If You Didn’t Write It Down […]
July 25, 2010 at 10:12 pm
How do you have your Notes set up in the text file(s)?
July 29, 2010 at 2:01 am
Mostly, now, in a markdown-esque format. The main thing for notes files that track work, is a big dividing line that says ‘DONE’; when I finish something, I move it (and all its notes) below that line.
Never throw any thoughts away.
September 21, 2010 at 7:31 am
[…] Methods of Work: It Didn’t Happen If You Didn’t Write It Down « Design By Gravity <span class="“> – Annotated […]
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December 5, 2012 at 12:07 pm
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